Abolish the Japanese language

"Year Zero” is a radical political notion. It involves overturning the status quo and entirely replacing it with a new order — revolution instead of evolution, because evolution is too slow. It is an act of such great upheaval that it usually only happens if the existing system has been completely discredited or destroyed, as in the cases of the bankrupt feudal monarchy overthrown by the French Revolution or the Nazi tyranny crushed by the Allies.

As Year Zero also means wiping the slate clean and starting afresh, it also involves great dangers. The last Year Zero program was implemented by the communist government of Cambodia in the ’70s, with disastrous results. Japan, too, has had its Year Zero — in 1868, when the Edo Shogunate was swept away by the centralizing state that created modern Japan.

I believe that the time is now ripe for Japan to have a new Year Zero, one that would sweep away the main curse that afflicts the country and its people: their cumbersome and impossible-to-learn language. I’m not just talking about my experience — Japanese people also never seem to completely succeed in learning their own language.

Compared to certain "awkward" European languages, Japanese does have good points. It lacks the gendered nouns and clunky accusative and nominative declensions of French and German. It is also easy to pronounce — in fact too easy, as this is why it is remembered visually through archaic-looking kanji.

Without kanji, Japanese people would be unable to distinguish half the words in their language from the other half. As proof, consider "cho." In one of the smaller English-Japanese dictionaries in my possession, 16 different meanings are listed for this one sound on its own. This number expands exponentially when "cho" is used in combination with other sounds.

The narrow range of sounds in the language makes it essential that all Japanese, from an early age until they die, must embark on the Sisyphean labor of learning, memorizing and re-learning countless kanji and their various permutations, a task that is not helped by the fact that many of the characters bear a remarkable resemblance to a squashed spider.

Some naive observers see this as proof of a more sophisticated culture, and even talk about the rich nuances of these obtuse ink blotches. But just flick on the TV and you’ll see what’s really going on. Although Japanese people, as a rule, are bright and studious, Japan itself has one of the most dumbed-down popular cultures I have ever encountered.

News programs avoid the complexities of international affairs, while almost every other program is about the simplicities of food and onsen. C-list celebrities are corralled to chat about inanities, often with the use of kanji subtitles to underscore key phrases.

The reason for this narrow focus is because most people’s kanji comfort zones don’t allow programs to employ the vocabulary necessary to deal with more complex topics.

If the Japanese language was a computer operating system, it would require a massive amount of memory. English, by contrast, is an OS that allows high performance with comparatively low demands on memory space. The effect is that, by using their native language instead of a superior foreign one, the Japanese handicap themselves and their culture. Indeed, the real reason Japanese people are so bad at learning foreign languages is because learning their own language uses up all the available educational oxygen.

This problem of a whole society and civilization running on a flawed OS can only be solved by a Year Zero solution, which would mean a provisional government seizing power during a transitional stage and implementing extreme measures backed by military force. This would last for at least 20 years, but it would be important from day one to maintain constant pressure for change. This is how I envisage the early stages of the Revolution:

Day One: The Ministry of English is set up with dictatorial powers to supervise education and arrest people for “language crimes.”

Day Two: All bookshops and libraries are closed, and only allowed to reopen once they have replaced their entire stock with English books. All Japanese books are pulped to make English flashcards.

Day Three: All signs written in kanji are painted over or removed.

Day Four: Government troops commandeer all pachinko parlors and transform them into ad hoc "eikaiwa" schools. Vast numbers of native English teachers are recruited by doubling all eikaiwa, JET and AET salaries, and sending “ninja teams” by submarine to areas with particularly good pronunciation, like the South of England and Northern California, to kidnap well-spoken people.

Day Five: All Japanese teachers are forced to sit a rigorous English exam. Those failing are sent on extended homestays overseas; those passing are required to teach only in English.

Day Six: All the sound trucks of far-right political groups and yaki-imo vans are commandeered and used to drive around broadcasting English lessons.

Day Seven: A jackbooted force of “English Commissars” is set up. Their duties include forcing people to read what’s written on their T-shirts and conducting random “L” and “R” tests at the point of a machine-gun.

C.B. Liddell is a Tokyo-based writer, editor and cartoonist.